A Different Fate
by BEN-Beyond the Elusive Nomads
Summary: The attack on Mindoir ended with Shepard taken captive just before the Alliance marines broke through the barricades. A very different Shepard has to deal with the rescue of Talitha. Will the reminder of everything she lost be more than she can take? T for violence. Shakarian, if you squint really hard. ME1.


A/N: So, this is a slight AU of Mass Effect in which Colonist Shepard wasn't saved on Mindoir and spent about 2 years with the Slavers (on a different ship from Talitha) before the Alliance takes out the ship and rescues her. I planned on making this a multichapter fic, but plot-wise I couldn't think of anything to do with it. I have no intentions of updating this regularly nor turning this into something substantial. It may be updated with related solos, but, I don't have any lasting plans regarding this.

**...**

She ran, ran as fast as she could. The barricade was in sight – she could see the Alliance just out of reach, trying so hard to take down the Batarians defense but failing at every turn. She met their eyes, desperate, pleading. She held a shot gun tightly in her sweaty hands, but it was cooling down – she wouldn't be able to take a shot.

A fist slammed into her gut and she choked, spittle dripping down her chin as she fell to her knees. She was crying, and she hated herself for it. She struggled weakly, her breath still evading her, and looked desperately towards the barricade.

She screamed for help. She met the eyes of the officers, so close to breaking through, but not close enough. One looked away, jaw clenched.

A fist slammed into the back of her head, and then she couldn't see anything at all.

...

She didn't know how long she was on the ship; it felt like an eternity. Her body didn't change much aside from the wiry muscles that moved under her skin, the gauntness of her cheeks, the frailty of her bones, so it couldn't have been long.

The other slaves were tricky, they fought and struggled until they were forced into submission. She watched them, learned what not to do. It kept her alive. She didn't know if that was what she wanted. The way she saw it, she had two choices – fight, and die, or wait. The Alliance looked after their own, so certainly they would come after the fleets.

The more days that passed, the less her assertion held. Soon she was little more than a shell following orders. She didn't even remember why she didn't fight – maybe it was the implant in her head, maybe it was fear. She could barely remember her name.

Eventually she stopped caring. She forgot what hope was, she forgot the faces of her family and friends. She forgot everything but her tasks, everything but her masters,

Then they came, swooping in like angels with assault rifles and shotguns tearing into the flesh of her masters. She cried when they died, but her body refused to go to them despite the implant roaring at her to defend them. She was immobilized.

A man found her huddled in the corner, staring blankly ahead at the body of the master that she had been serving moments before. He had been the one to kill him, put a bullet through his head and tearing through two of his four eyes.

"Hey, are you alright?" he asked. The sounds of gunfire had dwindled – most of the masters were dead. She was torn between relief and pain.

She met his eyes – wide, brown eyes that were gleaming with kindness despite the carnage around him. It was a look she hadn't seen in years, and though the implant screamed at her to avenge her masters her body refused.

"No," she whispered, her voice breaking before tears that had been held back for months flooded down her cheeks, "No. I'm not okay."

The officer pulled her from the corner, wrapping his thick arms around her protectively. He kept a firm arm around her shoulders as he guided her away, pausing to press her face against his chest whenever one of the masters was gunned down. A few times she stepped away, tried to protect them, but he pulled her back and his kind words kept her from panicking.

The masters would surely punish her for not doing anything. They may even kill her. Somehow, she couldn't see why that was a bad thing.

The officer pushed her into the strange ship made of smooth edges and gleaming glass, so different from the place that had acted as a home for the past age. He handed her off to a medic, a woman who didn't look nearly as welcoming as her savior, and when she turned to follow him he was gone.

She watched, wide eyed and vulnerable as the woman guided her into a med bay. She was gentle, but her moves seemed almost second-nature. It put her on edge, made her long for the kind man again.

"You're okay now," the medic soothed, "What's your name?"

She shook her head and whispered, "Animals don't have names."

Her name was Shepard. She didn't know her first name, didn't really remember it – her implant job had been hasty, poorly done. The medics said it was a wonder she survived with any memory at all. According to them she couldn't go around without a name, so they called her Jane.

Shepard had been barely 16 when the masters – the Batarians – raided Mindoir. A little over a year had passed since then, a year of torture and enslavement, but she had survived. Many didn't survive the first month.

She slowly began to gather herself, piece her life together with the help of a specially trained psychiatrist on the Citadel. She remembered bits and pieces of history, she knew what the Citadel was and she knew it was important. To be here, somewhere that seemed so clean and pure, was amazing. She felt like maybe – just maybe – she had been saved for a reason.

When the Alliance officer who saved her came to visit, she knew why she had been saved. She knew with sudden clarity what she was supposed to do – what she was supposed to be.

"I don't know if this is a good idea," Dr. Smith said with a frown, "Jane, are you certain this is what you want to do? I hardly imagine this would be good for your mental health."

"Death doesn't bother me," she said calmly, "I've survived hell. I'm not going to let anyone else suffer through that."

Dr. Smith sighed, pressing her fingertips into the bridge of her nose as if that could erase the migraine that had been steadily building all day, "While that is certainly an admirable goal, I fear you will only revert back into your shell. However…if that is what you really want…"

"It is," Shepard said, desperation slipping into her tone, "Please, Dr. Smith. I have to do this. I want to, and I can't unless you sign off that I'm fit for duty. Please."

The doctor watched her closely for a long moment, taking everything in. She remembered the day Jane was ushered into her office, pale, malnourished, dull green eyes and head shaved clean from surgery. Her eyes were brighter now, the green so deep it shocked her, and her hair had grown back quickly, the copper strands brushing against her shoulders. She had changed so quickly, so completely, and despite her misgivings she knew that she had no reason to keep Jane back.

She sighed, and nodded.

The smile that stretched across the teens face was more than enough to put her at ease.

**...**

Shepard was never one to hold grudges, despite the fact that she was more than owed retribution. Despite this, she found that she was handed the opportunity on a silver platter. Seven years after her abduction by Batarian slaving pirates, five years after joining the Alliance, she had her chance for revenge.

It was bittersweet, in the end. She wasn't fighting on Elysium for herself – she was fighting for everyone else. Each Batarian that took a shot between the eyes wasn't for her, it was for the person she saved. Each pirate she took down was one person she saved.

Somehow – and she had no idea how – she kept her people alive. Hell, she wasn't even on duty. She had been in the bar completely prepared to enjoy her leave when the Blitz began, and at the time she had just been asked to attend ICT. She could have sat back and hoped to be saved, but she'd had enough of that. She pulled her pistol from her hip and began rallying. More than enough people came to her aid, and they managed to keep the Batarians back. She felt no satisfaction in their death, there was no deep-sated-need cleansed that day. It was just another battle.

If this battle felt just a bit better than the others, well, that was because she knew exactly what she'd managed to prevent. That was a good thing.

She had thought life was going pretty alright, standing on the bridge of the SSV Normandy, executive officer to Captain Anderson with a gleaming N7 embossed on her armor.

She had smiled. It was going good day, even with a Council Spectre running around.

The good days never last, though. She found that out the hard way every time. Maybe she was foolishly optimistic, expecting the good vibes from that morning to last. Maybe Joker was right about Spectre's being bad news – she hoped not, considering she was in the running to be one.

It was always hard losing a man – and Jenkins was a good one. They gained a solider, though: Ashley Williams, a survivor. Though gaining one life didn't ease the pain of losing another, the loss didn't nullify the relief of managing to save someone else. They were two separate feelings that went side by side, and it was a bit conflicting, but Shepard had dealt with loss before; she would deal with it again.

Shepard understood with complete clarity that life functioned on a basic level – give, and take. While that was the root of it, there were always anomalies. They still followed the way, but it was a bit more complicated. It wasn't immediate, it wasn't a magic trick. Sometimes you gave and gave and gave and didn't get something back for years. Sometimes, all you did was receive. It always balanced out in the end, but sometimes you just didn't notice.

She supposed it boiled down to Karma. She wasn't sure, though.

The first person she gained after Eden Prime (she shuddered at the memory, even to this day) was the Turian C-Sec agent, Garrus Vakarian. He was young, if not numerically then idealistically. She didn't remember being so naïve, and she didn't want to be the one to break it to him, but fate had a different idea. She wound up chewing him out a time or two, keeping his ideals in check so he didn't wind up jaded. He was a good man, though, and those were hard to come by.

Then there was Wrex the Krogan, Tali the Quarian, and Liara the Asari. They were good people – good soldiers – and Shepard knew without them the war meant nothing. Somehow, and Lord knows she tried to understand how, they became her family. They took the place of the people and faces from Mindoir, the family she lost.

And so came the give and take – she lost her family all those years ago, lost her freedom. Now she was a Spectre, gifted with more freedom than any other solider in the galaxy, and she had a new family. They could never replace what she lost, to be certain, but they helped fill that ache in her chest that never quite left.

But even that didn't last – it couldn't last. She had been given so much, it was only natural that she would lose again. She had just hoped it wouldn't be a person.

Virmire was tough – it was hell on her senses, her emotions, and she hated every damn second spent on that god forsaken planet. She almost lost Wrex, infuriated as he was, but she managed to calm him down and keep him here. She should have known that balance would need to be restored.

It came down to Kaiden and Ashley – the biotic with puppy dog eyes and the soldier with a wicked tongue. She didn't have the luxury of time, of trying to weigh her options and see who would do best, who she would need more. She was an infiltrator, built for combat and tech with no spec of biotic capabilities whatsoever. They had Liara, though, and while Kaiden was good, Liara was an Asari.

When push came to shove, she saved Ashley. She didn't know if it was the right call – hell, she never would know – but it was a call. The team wasn't quite the same after that, with the startling realization that despite all they managed to achieve they were still so painfully mortal.

She grew closer with her crew, despite the pain (or maybe because of it). She worked endlessly, trying to justify her choice, and Ashley worked herself harder than ever before. Maybe she wanted to prove that Shepard made the right choice. Maybe she just had to forget the loss.

Garrus was surprisingly helpful in that span, his Turian outlook managing to sooth the pain a bit. She was surprised she ended up calling him a friend – possibly her best friend. Though Shepard tried not to let it happen, a rift had forged between herself and Ashely, and though Garrus was no replacement for her he certainly helped it sting a bit less.

He was there for her when she met Talitha.

"Don't push her too hard. If she seems liable to pull the trigger, back off, walk away. I'm willing to wait her out." Lieutenant Girard explained, a hint of worry colouring his tone. Shepard nodded, her throat tight. This wasn't how she anticipated her stay at the Citadel going, not by a long shot, but she had been asked to help. How could she refuse?

"Good luck."

She didn't respond as she headed up the ramp, her eyes focused on the crates the girl was hiding behind. Tali and Garrus were quiet as they followed her – Tali, from lack of knowing what to say, and Garrus out of respect.

Seeing the girls shorn head made Shepard's fingers twitch, aching to run through her own coppery strands as a reminder that she wasn't there anymore, and that she was okay. The scars were there, but they were hidden. She knew that if the girl were to turn she would see the jagged scar of an implant.

"Stop, stop!" the girl cried as Shepard passed the crates, pistol raised and ready to fire, "What – what are you?"

"My name is Shepard. Lieutenant Girard sent me to talk to you," she explained calmly, "What's your name?"

"Animals don't get names," the girl whispered, and the words were so hauntingly familiar it made Shepard's spine tingle, "The masters put their symbols on her, hot metal all over her back. She screams when they do it."

Shepard swallowed down the memories invoked by her words, instead pressing onwards, "You're not an animal. Your parents, what did they call you? Do you remember them?"

"She remembers a lot of things." She lowered the gun, her voice softening, "Talitha. They call her that. She…she doesn't remember the rest. Leave her alone."

A part of Shepard, a part she wasn't very proud of at all, wanted to. She wanted to walk away and leave her to her own devices. She wanted to get back to her ship, to her crew, to her life. She didn't want to talk to this girl, to listen to her describe things that she knew all too well. She didn't need the history lesson, didn't need the flashbacks.

She wondered if maybe the girl would be better off with a bullet in her brain.

"What's the last thing you remember from Mindoir?" she asked instead, pushing that vile part of her down where she couldn't reach it. Talitha could still be saved. She wasn't going to let her down.

"Fires. Smells of smoke and burning meat. Animals screaming as the masters cage them, as they put the metal to their backs. Put the wires in their brains. She pretends to be dead – if she's dead they can't work." Talitha shook her head, "But they know. She hopes they leave, but they put her in the pen. She didn't fight. She was already broken when they put the wires in."

Shepard swallowed back the memories and pushed on, isolating her heart for the moment. She couldn't help her if she let this get to her. She couldn't help her if she just curled up along side her. "Talitha you were what, 6 years old? No one blames you for staying quiet and hoping they'd go away. The only person blaming you is you."

"She wants to believe that. She wants to believe nothing would change. She doesn't want to be there any more. In the pen, in the cages. Lying quiet while they do things to her."

Shepard pressed her luck, raising her palms peacefully as she said, "I'm going to take a step towards you now, okay?"

"No!" Talitha cried violently after she took a step, "She's no good! Don't want to be handled again!"

She froze, but didn't take a step back. "How did you get here? Did you escape?"

Talitha laughed bitterly, "She can't escape. They have chains, wires, needles. You go too far they take your brains away. Animals like her come. Animals with guns. They make the masters explode. She tries to fix the masters so they won't be mad at her. She puts all the reds and purples back in but they don't move. The other animals take her."

"You were afraid," Shepard said soothingly, "All you'd known for thirteen years was the masters abuse." The word felt bitter on her tongue, like acid. "So you tried to heal them."

"She doesn't want to see other animals. They're not real. They can't be real! They can't see her." Her voice broke, eyes fogging up with tears that refused to fall, "If the animals can see her, then this is real. But it can't be, the wires, the chains, the hitting."

Her demeanor changed quickly, her movements violent as she yelled, "This doesn't happen to her, it's another girl, a dirty girl! A stupid girl! She deserves it!" The fire faded as quickly as it came, and all that was left was the broken girl asking, pleading: "It happens to her…doesn't it? They see her, so it's real. She doesn't want it to be real."

Shepard attempted another step, "I'm going to take another step towards you now, okay?"

She reacted just as violently as before, but there was a sort of resignation in her movements as she yelled, "She doesn't want – don't touch her!"

"I was on Mindoir," Shepard said finally, attempting to bridge some kind of connection between the two, "My parents died in the raid. I spent a year with…with the masters."

"Lying!" She screeched, panicking, "You get hit for lying! You get the buzz, or the burning. Can't be there." She sniffled, pointed the pistol at Shepard and ignoring the way the commanders comrades stiffened, "Why are you alive? Why are you – why aren't you like her? Broken. Only fit to dig and carry."

Shepard forced her voice to soften, forced herself to open up despite the large part of her that was screaming and begging her to push the memories back down. "For a while I was broken. I lost my whole family Talitha. My friends. My childhood. I had to pull myself up and keep going."

Talitha looked at her for a long moment, and Shepard wondered how close she was to helping her understand. "You lose your mommy and daddy but you don't dig, you don't carry. You stand up." Her lip trembled, "She wishes she could stand up."

"I'm going to take another step towards you now."

"Please don't touch her," Talitha begged, "She's dirty. You'll catch it."

"What happened to your parents?" she asked, though she knew the answer already – it was the same thing that had happened to her parents, he same thing that happened to everyone unfit for work. They were incinerated.

"She sees them." Talitha narrated, "They're yelling: Run! Hide! They hit the masters, but the masters they have lights and hoses. Daddy's…he's melting." She shook her head, "Shh! She doesn't want to see that! Don't make her look. Don't look! Stupid, stupid!"

Shepard attempted to keep her voice kind, soft, as she pushed onwards. "I know it hurts Talitha, I'm sorry, but you need to deal with this. What happened to them, think."

She shook her head, her voice painfully soft as she said, "When she thinks, water comes out of her eyes. The masters beat her when she wastes water. So she doesn't think anymore."

There was a long pause, and Shepard wasn't certain if she should say anything else. Talitha continued again quickly, "She see's them. Mommy and daddy, burning in white lights, melting. Going to pieces. They can't even say anything to her." She paused again, and a sliver of light slipped into her eyes. In that moment, she looked more aware than she had the whole conversation. "They're dead Shepard. They tried to save her and the masters burn them. Can she stop remembering them now, please?"

She pulled the sedative out and offered it to the girl, "Talitha, this will make you sleep. If you fall asleep, they'll take you to a place where you can get better."

Her heart hammered anxiously in her chest as Talitha took the pill, looking at it cautiously before popping it in her mouth and swallowing. She swayed on her feet slightly before asking, "Will she have bad dreams?"

Shepard wrapped her arms around the girl, holding her close and offering the only comfort she could – because this, she knew. This, she could tell her with certainty. "You'll dream of a warm place, and when you wake up, you'll be in it."

Talitha nodded, pulling back slowly as the sedative began to take effect. "She'd like that. It hurts when she…when I remember…me. But she wants to. She wants to remember."

The girl collapsed then, and Shepard didn't bother catching her. She should have, but her mind was too thick, too far gone in memories of a time better left forgotten. She felt Garrus place his hand on her back, offer comfort, and it helped slightly. She couldn't accept the offer, though – not now. She still had work to do.

"Is it over?" Lieutenant Girard asked as she stepped over. He looked anxiously at the crates.

"She took the sedative Lieutenant. She wants to get better." She reported. Girard visibly relaxed.

"Thanks commander that means a lot. I didn't want to hurt her." He shook his head, "It's just, when I see her curled into a ball and shivering…She was only six when they took her. What the hell are we doing out here if we can't even keep one little girl safe?"

Shepard wondered that a lot herself. She wasn't going to tell Girard that, though. "Bad things happen to good people Lieutenant," she said instead, "That's why you and I are here. Don't wring your hands over her. Help her.

Girard nodded sharply, "Yes ma'am. Thanks for your help, commander. We are taking her to a counseling center. They'll help her get better."

"I know they will."

She turned sharply and left. She wanted to return to the Normandy, but it was too soon for that. In truth, Shepard didn't trust herself to be alone, not when she had vile memories swirling around in her brain.

"Commander?" Tali asked curiously. Tali hadn't known her past, despite the fact that she had been a member of the crew for a while now. She hadn't been on the Citadel when Shepard had been retrieved – she had probably been with her family back on the Flotilla. Despite that, there was no way the technician didn't notice the way it affected her.

"I'm going to the bar," Shepard said, "If you want, you can go back to the ship. I can take care of myself."

"With all due respect commander, if you think we're going to leave you after that then you've got a lot to learn about us," Garrus said, his voice light despite the subject matter. She appreciated it more than she had expected.

"I had no idea you went through that," Tali said, a measure of awe in her tone, "Shepard, I always knew you were tough, but now…I don't think I've ever met anyone stronger."

"I was only there for a year," she said, shaking her head, "Talitha was there for thirteen years. I'm not the strong one here. I got lucky."

"Did they – did they put an implant in you?" Tali asked after a moments hesitation. Shepard nodded, running her fingers through her hair and pressing the tips against the ragged scar tissue at the base of her neck – no one could see it unless her hair was up, but she knew it was there.

"They did a shit job of it," she said, "I don't even remember my first name. After the Alliance rescued me, they called me Jane. Only my psychiatrist ever called me Jane, so I would prefer you keep calling me Shepard."

She smiled at the Quarian, mostly an attempt to let the younger woman know that she hadn't taken offense to her line of questioning. She was shaken up still, but she had dealt with the tragedy long ago. She could talk about it – and she knew, in the end, that talking about it made it easier.

"I remember when you were rescued," Garrus said, "I was fourteen, here visiting my father in C-Sec. They made a big fuss about it at the time – half the division wanted to get a glimpse of you, but my father kept them in line."

"Remind me to thank your father," Shepard said dryly.

It was a calm day, in comparison to what the team was used to. Nobody died, there were no shoot outs, and Shepard managed to help a troubled girl get her life started. In the grand scheme of things, they day wasn't that important. For Shepard, though, it meant everything.

Shepard didn't play favorites – each member of her crew mattered, each team mate was special to her and she knew it would hurt if she ever lost any of them. Garrus and Tali, through some strange quirk of fate, had slipped past her defenses. It was dangerous – downright suicidal – but Shepard couldn't help but think that maybe, just maybe, it would pay off in the end.


End file.
